“Thank you, I’m sure!” said Isabella, making the medical officer’s cheeks turn pink.
“I’ve got a field kit, your highness,” he said to Annabel, who didn’t realise what he meant until he held up a roll of bandage. “It’s not much, and none of us have more than the minimum level of magic, but it’ll stop you bleeding for the rest of the journey. I daren’t try to fix it with magic in case I hurt you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and held out the hand. Melchior would have fixed it up with a touch of magic, but Melchior wasn’t here. Startling the young medical officer considerably, she said indignantly, “Just you wait!”
He dropped the bandages. “Your highness?”
“Not you,” Annabel said. “Sorry. I was thinking about someone else. Who arranged for you to shadow us, anyway?”
“Well—”
Isabella gave Raoul a sharp look. “What? Not allowed to tell us?”
Raoul tried to look dignified. “It’s not that. It’s just that—well, we don’t know ourselves, if you must know, Belle! The Head Guardsman gave the orders, but no one seems to know where he got the orders.”
“Just as I thought!” Isabella said triumphantly.
“Don’t try and pretend you know everything,” Raoul said at once, and Annabel grinned.
“Are they always like this?” she asked the medical officer, tilting her head in their direction.
The medical officer went pink again. “Yes. They get along very well, your highness; I don’t want you to think they don’t.”
“Oh no, I can see that,” Annabel said easily. “Sorry for the trouble, by the way.”
“No, no, it’s a pleasure!” he blurted, and then blushed fierily. “I mean—it’s not a pleasure that you’ve hurt yourself—it’s—”
“Actually, it’s mostly embarrassing,” said Annabel. Good grief, he went very red. “I was hoping not to fall over in front of people after my training.”
“Did you fall over often before it?” asked the medical officer, as if he couldn’t help himself. He blushed again, more painfully.
“Lots!” Annabel said frankly. “That’ll teach me to be so confident. What’s your name?”
“Good heavens, I think you’ve broken him,” said Isabella, as the medical officer opened and closed his mouth without a sound.
“His name is Dannick,” said Raoul.
“Yes, Dannick,” said Dannick.
“And he’s not used to dealing with royalty.”
“Or being asked his name,” Isabella remarked irrepressibly. “Otherwise he might have had it on his tongue more readily.”
“I’ve finished, your highness,” Dannick said hastily, and darted away to the back of the group. He came back a moment later, even more flustered; bowed his respects, and darted away again.
Was it the queen-to-be who had so thrown Dannick out of his stride, or Annabel herself? wondered Annabel. She wasn’t used to producing such an effect. She repressed a sigh, and found herself thinking about Peter again. They’d promised they would marry each other when they got older. It would have made things a lot easier if she’d kept that bargain. No need to try and decipher who was caught with the Queen and who was caught with Annabel—Peter had absolutely no interest in being King Consort, and if he wasn’t always kind or pleasant, at least he was familiar. It was stupid to think about that, however; she’d already told Peter that she wasn’t going to marry him, and now he’d disappeared, to boot.
“Come along, Nan,” said Isabella, pinching at her sleeve. “We’d best start off again; we’ll need to make up a bit of ground before we stop for the night. There’s nothing worse than arriving at Trenthams half way through the first free day; all the other girls arrive then, too.”
“You’re being a bit familiar, aren’t you, Belle?” demanded Raoul. Despite the tone, he lifted Isabella over the muddy patch at the door of the coach and put her carefully in the coach. “Her highness won’t understand your—actually, it’s just plain cheek! Please excuse her, your highness.”
“I was familiar first,” Annabel said cheerfully. “And after we’ve fought off footpads together, it’s a bit silly to be ‘your highness’ing and ‘Miss Farrah’ing each other. “Anyway, it’s what Melchior calls me, too.”
“Lucky, Belle!” said Raoul, lifting Annabel in as well. His tone sounded more warning than congratulatory.
Isabella poohpooed at him. “Watch your own luck, thank you, Raoul! And next time, make a showing before my hat is ruined!”
“What a shame,” said Annabel, grinning. She picked up the ruined hat and examined the brim. “You didn’t get a chance to take vengeance for your hat!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Isabella, more cheerfully. She was watching the Guardsmen bundle up the frozen footpads with a professional kind of interest. “I managed to poke one or two of the ones nearest the door with my parasol. And it’s not a complete loss, after all; I can use a few pieces from this one on a new hat or two.”
“Yes,” agreed Annabel, eyeing Isabella in fascination. She had absolutely no idea how a person was supposed to take pieces of an old hat to make a new one, but she was inclined to think that if anyone could do so, it would be Isabella. “Do you often make your own hats?”
Isabella nodded and said confidingly, “Of course. You can always get a beautiful hat from a good milliner, but a really useful hat can only be made at home.”
“What do you keep in these useful hats of yours?”
Isabella gave a surprised giggle. “I keep forgetting how quick in the uptake you are! It’s that face of yours!”
“Rude,” said Annabel, as the coach gave a lurch forward again. She wondered where the guardsmen had put the footpads—on the back of the coach, or on one or two of their horses? The coach certainly felt heavier.
“If you must know, it depends upon the hat. The smaller brims, you know, are for later afternoon and evening—they have a smaller crown, too, so it’s harder to hide things in them, but during the evening I would only usually need my lockpicking things and perhaps a little grease.”
“You need grease in the evenings?”
“Well, in the evenings it’s usually things like opening doors and drawers and making sure hinges don’t make too much noise. Not that I sneak around every evening, of course!”
“Of course!” echoed Annabel. “What sort of things do you keep in your other hats?”
“One of them has some lovely little knives,” said Isabella. She sounded regretful as she said, “They don’t really come in useful for me, you understand; I just like to take them with me sometimes, anyway.”
“I’m not surprised,” Annabel said. “I suppose you talk your way out of everything.”
“Pretty nearly!” Isabella said, not at all offended. “And I’ve been known to run for it once or twice. You have no idea how difficult it is to keep to a trot in corsets, Nan!”
“Well—”
“You have? Of course you have! Dear me! Why am I blathering away about hats when I haven’t even asked about the castle yet?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about the castle,” said Annabel.
“Of course not!” agreed Isabella. “But the journey is long and I’m awfully inquisitive—not to mention very hard to put off—so you might as well begin now. I think there are still some chocolates that weren’t lost in the upheaval, by the by.”
“Yes,” said Annabel. “You sat on one, actually. The rest are mostly in the box, but I think there’s a bit of grass in there, too.”
“Oh well, a bit of grass won’t hurt us,” Isabella said, dubiously examining the chocolate smear on the skirt of her blue overcoat. “What a good thing I wore my blue duster today! I’ll have to have it cleaned, but at least I can take it off when we get to school so that I don’t disgrace myself.”
She sat back down with perfect goodwill and offered the grassy chocolate box to Annabel as a small lurch forward announced the continuance of their journey. And Annabel, who hadn’t intended on s
aying any such thing, took a chocolate and said, “It was a ruin at first. Peter and I always played there when we were kids…”
It wasn’t until they got to their next stop that Annabel realised she’d been talking nearly the whole afternoon and well into the evening. For a person who talked as much as she did, Isabella was a surprisingly good listener. That was another thing about her, thought Annabel gloomily as she climbed out of the coach, that was decidedly suspicious. If Isabella’s father was anything like Isabella, the ambassadorial affairs must have been going along swimmingly these last few years.
There was no dinner or room arranged for her at that stop, either, and the only significant amount of talking Isabella did was to arrange rooms—and when that proved too difficult to accommodate, a room—and dinner for them both. Annabel, who was much more used to thinking than speaking, thought that this was by far the most dangerous quality that Isabella had thus far displayed. It would probably be wise to stop talking so much, especially since it was so easy to trust the other girl. Annabel preferred to be more careful about how much she said in public places.
She stopped talking in the face of Isabella’s encouraging silences, and soon Isabella, with perfect politeness, took up the burden of conversation once again. Since she did that by asking cheerfully, “Rethinking your decision that I’m to be trusted?” Annabel was able to withstand feeling grateful to her.
“No,” she said, looking pointedly around the room. “But I’m not supposed to talk about this sort of thing. Where other people can hear, I mean.”
“Oh!” Isabella looked genuinely surprised. “How lovely! I merely thought you didn’t trust me. Well, that’s good policy, after all.”
Annabel couldn’t help grinning. “You look so surprised! Do people usually not trust you?”
“Not at all,” said Isabella. “I’m very trust-inducing. It’s just that you’re a little more discerning than the average person I meet with, and I’m suffering from the odd circumstance of being wrong. It’s very unusual.”
Annabel, with a slight edge of sarcasm, said, “I suppose you’re always right.”
“Generally speaking, yes!” Isabella said frankly. “Well, not always; but often enough to trust my intuition most of the time. People are people no matter where you go, I find; in any one place you’ll find all the people you met at the last place. It’s rather depressing.”
“That is depressing,” agreed Annabel. “Fancy thinking there might be more than one Luck in the world!”
Isabella gave vent to a surprised giggle. “Oh well, so long as there are enough Polys to deal with them!”
By the time they arrived at Trenthams, the chocolates were well and truly gone. They would have arrived at Trenthams, in fact, an entire day before they did, if Isabella hadn’t insisted that it was impossible to travel any further without more chocolates. Annabel, who only found out the next day that Trenthams was a bare twenty minute journey from the village where they spent the vast portion of the previous afternoon and night, had no fault to find with Isabella’s insistence. The closer they got to Trenthams, the gloomier she became, and she fully approved of Isabella’s love for chocolate, though she wished it would show as little on her own figure as it did on Isabella’s slender one.
Still, she couldn’t help sending an accusatory look in Isabella’s direction when the carriage, with its Guardsman escort, pulled up at a pair of impressively curly gates that said Trenthams School for Elegant Young Ladies amidst its curls.
“Don’t be like that, Nan.”
“I feel ridiculous,” said Annabel, beginning to laugh. “I was prepared for another full day’s journey!”
“Well, aren’t you glad it isn’t?”
“Yes, but why didn’t we come last night?”
“Nobody arrives on the first day!” Isabella said, earnestly. “Really, Nan! And considering who you are, we really should be setting a fashionable way of things from the start.”
“Won’t it be awfully crowded today?”
“Perhaps a little,” agreed Isabella. “But that’s the joy of it! We can be important with very little trouble—all we have to do is meet with the headmistress and go to our room, and everyone will see you.”
“I don’t particularly want everyone to see me.”
“Would you prefer them all to be lined up outside our room later on?”
Annabel looked at her in horror as the carriage pulled up outside a vast blockwork building with reinforced, double doors. “Would they?”
“Quite a lot of them will still do so, but the ones who are only curious should be content to see you in the corridors and the dining hall.” Isabella tilted her head carefully, her new hat just clearing the window frame, and looked around with a sparkling alertness. That new hat was another thing she had found it necessary to purchase in the village, though the fact that it was new hadn’t stopped her from tearing it nearly to pieces and making it up differently again. “Ah, yes—there are already faces in the windows. Don’t fall over this time, will you, Nan?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Annabel, repressing the urge to remark that she hadn’t exactly done it on purpose last time.
Isabella left the carriage first, new hat foremost, and stood in front of the carriage steps for just a little too long. Annabel would have been annoyed by it if it hadn’t occurred to her that Isabella was providing a shoulder for Annabel to steady herself by if she tripped again.
Annabel took her time following, her face settling comfortably into a familiar, flat gaze. Falling over in front of brigands and guardsmen was bad enough; she didn’t think she could bear to fall over in front of the assembled face of Trenthams as well. She didn’t need Isabella’s shoulder, and that shoulder moved forward smoothly as soon as she was safely on the gravel, tilting just a little bit for its owner to direct a smile over it at Raoul, who had opened the door for them.
“Now this is arriving in style!” Isabella murmured.
Annabel looked up at the windows for one brief, sick moment, and away just as quickly. “Where do we go now?”
“It’s not a matter of where we should be going, it’s more a matter of who should be here to meet you,” said Isabella. “Now, this is a little odd; the headmistresses should really be here to meet you.”
“No one is supposed to know I’m the queen heir.”
“Of course not; but you can’t expect them to lose their chance to ingratiate themselves with royalty, can you? Only see how desperate I was! I threw myself into your carriage, flailing and throwing chocolates at you.”
Annabel gave a small giggle. “Is that what you were? Desperate?”
Isabella turned a sparkling look on her. “Of course! We shall walk, Nan; very slowly. Just a few steps forward, because the front doors are beginning to open.”
The doors were beginning to open. As Annabel took those few, slow steps forward, keeping pace with Isabella, a twin pair of shadows darkened the stairs and moved forward gracefully. They were taller than Isabella, taller even than Raoul; a pair of well-dressed, well-coiffed women who looked as though they had just that moment stepped from their boudoirs.
“The Awesome Aunts,” murmured Isabella. “Try not to look so overawed, Nan! They’re not so fearsome so long as you don’t break too many rules in too short a time.”
“You know that by experience, I suppose,” said Annabel.
“How else?” Isabella said lightly, and moved forward again. “Good day ma’am; ma’am!”
“Miss Farrah,” said both women at once, and bowed very slightly. Enough to acknowledge, but not to concede. One of them—how was she supposed to tell them apart? Annabel wondered—added, “I see you have brought another student with you.”
“I have,” agreed Isabella. “Although you might say that she brought me, since the carriage is hers, after all. This is Annabel—I suppose you were expecting her. If you weren’t, I’ve brought her to the wrong school.”
“Miss Farrah, you are pert. You must not suppose that
your work with your father over the last two years pre-empts you from abiding by the rules of this school. You have only been back at the school for six months and have much to learn.”
“Not at all,” Isabella said politely. “I should never suppose that two years as an ambassadorial adjunct would be of any use whatsoever when it comes to learning how to behave in polite society. I look forward to learning a great deal now that I’m back to stay.”
“Yes,” said one of the Awesome Aunts. She sounded doubtful about that, but, to Annabel’s bemusement, didn’t seem to find anything dubious about the rest of Isabella’s reply. The Awesome Aunts, she was beginning to think, only looked awesome; she had the feeling that they might even be the slightest bit…well, slow.
“We will show you to your room,” said the other Awesome Aunt. This one was wearing a lavender cameo pin; the other wore a yellow pin.
Annabel, in relief, seized upon this single method of differentiation, and said, “Thank you. We appreciate it.”
“We consider it good manners to show a new student to her room,” said the Yellow Aunt, impressively. “We shall be family, and it is imperative that things Get Off to a Good Start.”
“Oh,” said Annabel. “Yes, of course.”
“The men will take your bags,” said the Lavender Aunt.
To Annabel that seemed hard on the guardsmen, who were there to guard her and not to carry her bags, but Raoul was already loosening the knots that held her baggage in place.
The Lavender Aunt added, “Do follow me, my lady, Miss Farrah.”
Annabel didn’t miss the quick look that Isabella flicked at her. So they were calling her ‘my lady’, were they? That was a nice way of pretending they didn’t know she was the queen heir; they could still show deference without being too noticeable about it.
“Lights out and curfew are strictly enforced,” said the Yellow Aunt, as she led the way into the school. “As likewise are boundaries. You will be provided with a list of school rules, and if you possess anything of magical origin, you are requested to leave it with us until the end of term.”
Staff & Crown Page 5